I’m off to the Willamette Writers Conference. I’m not hungry but I’m trying to eat since I figure I won’t eat again until this afternoon.
Last night I had another dream about working at Jack-in-the-Box. That was my job in high school. That’s the second Jack-in-the-Box dream this week. I think my subconscious is trying to tell me something.
The new taste treat: toasted cinnamon raisin English muffins with tahini.
Let me be the person to tell you about Great Big Sea a super fabulous band from beautiful metropolitan Newfoundland. We’re seeing them in a couple of weeks and I’m listening to them right now and this is the first time in a Very Long Time that I have been won over by a band in less than 10 notes
Today I got out the box of new letterhead at the office and was depressed to notice that it said #10 instead of #6. We bought it over two months ago and I didn’t see how the printers were going to muster up any sympathy for us after all this time. I’m pretty sure it came in when I wasn’t there but I’m not sure I would have noticed anyway. I brought it in and re-ordered, asked them to make sure our file had all #6 in it and gave them the box and asked them to make scratch pads out of it. What a giant waste of money and paper.
Tonight I went to my first yoga class since April. I dropped into Bill’s new place at the Galleria which should probably be called the Ghost town (The Galleria = ghost town. The yoga studio is fabulous.) This was not the power yoga class and thank God because I’m not quite as strong as I used to be. I need to get my practice back up to speed. Tomorrow I bet I am going to be sore.
My garden is pretty pathetic this year. I picked tomato number 3 today — not counting two tiny romas about the size of my thumb. There’s one puny cucumber out there and it looks like 2 turnips and a whole bunch of beets. My most successful crop is something you don’t want to eat by the bushel. It rained a bit yesterday so I used that and the mild weather as an excuse to not water. The watering is getting very tedious. I hate to complain. I mean, what if I had to depend on my garden to survive and I had to haul buckets of water uphill? That would suck.
This week I got a thing in the mail from my reunion for “Keepsake Photos” for $89.95 plus $6 shipping I can get 2-8×10, 4-5×7, 4-4×5 and 16 wallets of this faboo picture that I’m going to scan and stick up here eventually. What the hell am I going to do with all these pictures of my mug? I’m not sure I would even want to see it in an 8×10, why would anyone else? Does anyone reading this keep pictures of adults, other than a spouse, in their wallet? (For the record, I don’t have any pictures in my wallet except ID photos.)
The squirrels have completely destroyed the sunflowers. I think there are 3 left plus one big one that they’ve completely eaten around the edges but left on the stalk. Yesterday when I cleaned up the yard I pulled a bunch out and thoughtfully piled them against the fence, hoping to encourage them to continue snacking on the ones that are already ruined. About an hour later I looked out in the yard and here the last pretty one was just a tall stalk with some leaves dangling and the remains of the flower sat under the rose bush. I need someone to loan me a very big dog with sharp teeth.
In a shocking development, I’m still trying to get organized and going nowhere fast. This seems to be the lesson of my entire life and I seem to be incapable of learning from it. Oh well, maybe in my next life. I ran some errands this morning and the city of Vancouver has managed to destroy just about every street you’d ever want to drive on. There is no easy way to get anywhere.
For you entertainment I suggest checking out the trailer for Episode III. High speed connection strongly recommended.
I forgot to mention that I finished White Teeth by Zadie Smith this morning. I don’t know. I gobbled up the first 350 pages on the trip to LA and thought it was a pretty cool book but for the last 100 pages I’ve been thinking, “when is this book going to get over?” I’m not sure I even understand what happened at the end and I’m not about to go back and read it again. Also we got *another* copy of The Week today — I am now 3 issues behind. This is why you should never subscribe to a weekly.
The plan for this afternoon is to do a bit of tweaks and start building the new pages for High Sierra and the trip to L.A. We’ll see how far I get. I just did today’s “15 minute gardener” routine. I finished chopping down the other dead rhodie and managed to dig up the stump or root ball or whatever you’d call it and I cleared a bunch more ivy and started chipping away at the tall rhodie on the side of the house. It’s about 10 feet tall now and I think I want to make it more my height. Someday this area will be ivy free and I’m going to plant hostas and maybe some calla lillies if they’re easy to grow. I also harvested more beets. Beets are my best crop after tomatoes. And what a bummer because Bob won’t eat them. Billy won’t eat the beets anymore either.
Last night we went to the Lillian Pitt Gallery on NE Alberta to see the premiere of a documentary about the Plateau People – art, culture and history of some local Indians. The documentary is very well done and the gallery is fabulous. I pointed out many ideas for potential gifts to my husband. Next weekend is the Wy-Kan-Ush-Pum at Waterfront park which is the Indian Art Northwest artist’s market and also fun outdoor music. I think we’re going to check it out.
I got back from LA Monday afternoon and I have a ton of stories — I think this weekend will be tune-up website and post High Sierra and 20 Yr. Reunion stories — I say that now, we’ll see how I feel then. The condensed version is: I had a super fabulous time and would do it again in a hot second. But now I’m slogging through post-vacation bitchy-ass mode and trying to get my act together while not being in the mood to do anything except time wasting activities. Bob subscribed us to emusic.com so I see a major time suck getting to know that site.
Meanwhile, here are two helpful law enforcement oriented URLs. You can educate yourself on speedtraps in your area and you can use this handy calculator to compute your blood alcohol content. Like you’re going to be anywhere near a computer when you need this information.
